Hemostatic compositions in dry storage-stable form that comprise biocompatible, biodegradable, dry stable granular material are known e.g. from WO 98/008550 A or WO 2003/007845 A. These products have been successfully applied on the art for hemostasis. Floseal® is an example for a powerful and versatile hemostatic agent consisting of a granular gelatin matrix swollen in a thrombin-containing solution to form a flow-able paste.
Since such products have to be applied to humans, it is necessary to provide highest safety standards for quality, storage-stability and sterility of the final products and the components thereof. On the other hand, manufacturing and handling should be made as convenient and efficient as possible. If the Hemostatic compositions require a thrombin component for use, provision of this thrombin component in the final product is challenging. Since thrombin and the matrix material usually have different properties concerning manufacture requirements, they have to be manufactured and provided separately. For example, sterilization requirements may differ significantly between relatively stable granular (often also crosslinked) matrix material and proteinaceous components, such as thrombin. Whereas such matrix materials can usually be sterilized by powerful sterilization methods (such as autoclaving, gamma-irradiation, etc.), thrombin (as an enzyme) has to be treated with more care. Those powerful sterilization methods are usually not possible for thrombin, because of loss of enzymatic activity caused by such harsh treatments. For stability reasons, such products (as well as the products according to the present invention) are usually provided in a dry form and brought into the “ready-to-use” form (which is usually in the form of a (hydro-)gel, suspension or solution) immediately before use, necessitating the addition of wetting or solvation (suspension) agents and the mixing of the matrix material component with the thrombin component. Thrombin reconstitution or the mixing step of a thrombin solution with the granular matrix material are steps which usually require some time and handling and can cause problems especially in intensive health care.
It is an object of the present invention to overcome such problems and provide suitable methods for making dry and storage-stable hemostatic composition with are conveniently providable and usable. These methods should provide product formats enabling a convenient provision of “ready-to-use” hemostatic compositions, especially in intensive care medicine wherein the number of handling steps should be kept as low as possible.